Songwriters play central role in new music books

NEW YORK 
The John Lennon-Paul McCartney songwriting team broke up 40 years ago but their influence lives on in music, pop culture and now in two prominent new books about music.

Lennon is one of the five seminal artists who shape the backbone of "Corn Flakes With John Lennon," a memoir by Robert Hilburn, the influential former critic and reporter for the Los Angeles Times. Author Peter Ames Carlin focused on Lennon's partner for the biography "McCartney: A Life."

Hilburn, 70, is a throwback to when music writers such as himself carried enormous influence, and had the access and longevity to get to know musicians better than few in the media do today. He can write about corn flakes with John Lennon because he shared meals with the ex-Beatle. Hilburn is soft-spoken, but has a strong enough voice both editorially and in person that when Bono asks, he's not afraid to let the U2 singer know when he's made a wrong turn.

Carlin is a pop culture writer for The Oregonian in Portland and author of a Brian Wilson biography.

Hilburn said Lennon was one of the few artists with whom he had ever developed a social relationship, a relationship cut short in 1980 when Lennon was murdered outside his Manhattan home. But Hillburn never had the same relationship with Lennon's former partner, who is guarded and rarely self-reflective with journalists.

"I hate to say this, but there is nothing to learn from McCartney," Hillburn said.

Carlin, though, found McCartney's life in the 1970s and the evolution of his band, Wings, of great interest, despite the library load of books written about the Beatles and McCartney.

He was most interested in how McCartney dealt with the concept of being 27 and recognizing that he'd be known as an ex-Beatle for the rest of his life.

Not well, at least at first. McCartney retreated to life on a farm with wife Linda and his family, and drank too much. But McCartney, whose mother died when he was a teenager, learned early from his father Jim that you soldier on when you take some hits. He formed the band Wings and did just that - he soldiered on.

McCartney's breeziness and seemingly endless font of melodies, gave the impression that things came easily to him, and that his work was somehow less valuable than songs by Lennon and his tortured artist persona. To many, Lennon's lionization after his death further minimized McCartney's contributions and frustrated him.

"People want it to be simple - John is this guy, Paul is that guy," Carlin said. "Paul was as serious and radical an artist as John. John was as much a showman and pop musician as Paul was."

Carlin received cooperation in his research from many people around McCartney, but not from the man himself. And while McCartney said he's grateful that people are interested enough to write a book about his life, he doesn't plan to read it.

"I'm living it, not reading about it," McCartney said in an interview. "There's always something that I'll see that isn't true and I'll either worry about it and say, `Oh, God, people are going to read this and think it's true because it's in a book,' or I'm just not going to be a part of it."